A Catered Tea Party

by Isis Crawford

  Sean looked at his youngest daughter when she came barreling in and turned off the TV.

  “Casper should have told me,” she said.

  “He was probably scared to,” Sean answered. Then he said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.”

  Bernie bit her lip. “I guess I deserve that.”

  “You do, but it’s a hard lesson to learn.”

  A moment later, Libby came up the stairs. Five minutes after that, Casper did the same. He was still in his pajamas, looking disheveled and gaunt. “I’m sorry,” he said to Bernie. He was holding a cardboard box in his hands. “I’m really sorry.” He went over to Bernie and gently placed the box in her hands.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Bernie asked him.

  Casper nodded.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Sean told Casper while Bernie opened the box. “Do you want something to drink?”

  Casper shook his head. He was feeling queasy.

  “Eat?”

  Casper shook his head again.

  “You want some peach pie,” Sean declared. “We all want some of Bernie and Libby’s peach pie.” When Casper didn’t answer, Sean said, “I’ll take your silence as a yes.”

  Libby got up and went downstairs to do the honors. By the time she came back up, Bernie had the teapot out of the cardboard box and carefully placed on the mantel.

  “It doesn’t look like it would be worth that much,” Libby said about the teapot as she set a tray loaded down with peach pie, plates, forks, spoons, and homemade vanilla ice cream on the coffee table.

  “It doesn’t, does it?” Casper said in a low voice.

  Libby dished out the pie and the ice cream, and for a moment no one spoke. They were too busy eating.

  “This is really wonderful,” Casper said when he was halfway done. Surprisingly, he was feeling a little better.

  “Have some more,” Sean directed, leaning over, cutting another slice, and plopping it on Casper’s plate. “You look as if you could use it.”

  “Why?” Bernie asked when Casper was finally done eating.

  Casper bit his lip and looked down at his plate. “I have all these bills. I thought I could sell it. I told you. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to do with it.”

  “I get taking it the first time, but the second . . . the whole note and teapot thing . . . ,” Bernie said. “Why?”

  Casper pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I never should have done it,” he said. He didn’t have the energy to lie anymore. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  “And it shows,” Sean said. He’d heard all he needed to hear.

  “Dad!” Bernie cried.

  Sean turned to her. “Well, it’s true.” Then Sean finished the last of his pie, sat back in his chair, and waited for Casper to speak. When he didn’t, Sean put his hands on his thighs and leaned forward. There was a clap of thunder signaling the arrival of the storm. “Do you want to tell Bernie and Libby why you did what you did, or should I?” Sean asked Casper.

  “I meant well,” Casper said.

  “Did you?” Sean asked.

  “Yes, I did,” Casper told him.

  “Do you want to hear what I think happened?” Sean asked. Then he went ahead before Casper said anything. “This is what I think occurred,” he told him. “First, of course, you stole the teapot. That was a crime of opportunity. You didn’t think it through. You thought you’d be able to sell it quickly. But you couldn’t.

  “So you had this thing lying around, and I think you were getting nervous that Zalinsky’s killer and possibly my daughters were going to figure out that you were the one who stole the teapot, so you decided to stage a diversion, a diversion that would hopefully send everyone off in a different direction. Moving out of your house made everything seem more convincing.”

  “That’s not true,” Casper said. “Well, maybe it’s partially true.”

  “Which is it?” Bernie asked.

  Casper didn’t reply.

  “But why did you think that?” Bernie asked him. She didn’t understand. “We never thought anything of the kind.”

  “He did it because he was greedy,” Sean said.

  “That’s not it,” Casper said.

  “Then what was it?” Sean demanded.

  “I was trying to do a good thing,” Casper told him.

  “How do you figure that?” Libby asked.

  When Casper didn’t answer, Sean continued. “He wasn’t. Casper figured that with you running around, he had more time to sell the teapot. But it didn’t matter. He didn’t know the right people to sell it to. He was stuck with the thing, the thing that someone else felt belonged to them. Then there were the police. He could have gone to them, but if they found out he had the teapot, they would use it as confirmation that he killed Zalinsky. So he was in a bind, a bind of his own making. Do I have it right, Casper?” Sean asked.

  Casper lifted his head up. “Some of it.”

  “What’s the rest?” Bernie asked.

  “What’s the point?” Casper said. “You won’t believe me anyway.”

  “Try us,” Sean said.

  “I just thought . . .” Casper shook his head. He looked miserable. “Forget it. I was probably wrong anyway. What are you going to do now? Call the police and turn me in?”

  “That’s up to my daughters,” Sean informed him, deciding Casper looked as if he was going to cry.

  “You deserve it,” Libby told him.

  “But we’re not going to,” Bernie quickly added, although she would have liked to, given all the trouble he’d caused.

  Casper leaped off the sofa and hugged Bernie and Libby. “Thank you, thank you,” he said. Then he turned to Sean.

  “Not necessary,” Sean said, shrinking back in his seat. He held up his hands. “No hugging, please. I don’t do hugging. Just sit back down.”

  “I’m not a good criminal,” Casper observed once he was back on the sofa.

  “Now that’s a massive understatement if I ever heard one,” Sean remarked.

  “I thought I would be,” Casper said mournfully. “I’ve staged two mysteries.”

  “Not quite the same thing,” Sean was telling him when he noticed that Bernie was looking at her cell. “Can’t you put that thing away?” he told her.

  “It’s Lucy Chin,” Bernie replied. “She sent me the photos she promised.”

  “Let’s see,” Sean said.

  Chapter 45

  Bernie got up, went into the bedroom, and got her laptop. The photos would be easier to see on that. She came out a moment later and put the laptop on the table. Everyone huddled around it while she downloaded the file. The first two images showed a large group of fancily dressed people holding drinks and talking. So did the third and the fourth ones.

  “I hope this isn’t going to be a waste of time,” Bernie said as the fifth image came into view.

  Casper squinted and pointed to the picture. “Can you make this larger?”

  Bernie did, and Casper tapped the screen. “There,” he said. Suddenly he was smiling.

  Bernie and Libby leaned in.

  “What?” Bernie asked. She still didn’t see what Casper was pointing to.

  “I see,” Libby said. A moment later, Bernie did too. It was Zalinsky and his partner. Libby turned to Bernie. “Is he with who I think he is?”

  Bernie nodded. “Yeah. He is.” She went back to the earlier images. Now that she knew who she was looking for, she could see the couple in the third picture as well.

  “I thought he was with Erin,” Libby said.

  Casper laughed and pumped his fist in the air. “I was right. I was right all along. I thought I was crazy, but I wasn’t.”

  “About what?” Bernie asked.

  “You’ll see,” Casper said, with a smug smile on his face.

  “I wonder if she’s who he was leaving Erin for?” Libby mused.

  “Even if she was,” Bernie pointed out, “I don’t
see how she could have had anything to do with Zalinsky’s death. She wasn’t at Alice.”

  “Yes, she was,” Casper contradicted. “I saw her there. She was in the audience. First row, last seat on the left.”

  “But she wasn’t backstage,” Bernie said. “I would have seen her if she had been.”

  “Not necessarily. Anyway, he was,” Casper said, pointing to a waiter standing off to one side.

  “Is that Ivan?” Libby asked, bending even closer. “Ivan the bodyguard?”

  “Sure looks that way to me,” Casper replied, his smile getting even bigger if that was possible.

  “Maybe it’s coincidence,” Bernie suggested.

  “Doubtful,” Sean remarked, voicing his opinion. If his years in law enforcement had taught him anything, they had taught him not to believe in coincidence.

  Bernie scrolled through more of the photos. There were twenty in all. In the eighteenth image, they found a picture of Alla Feldman, Zalinsky’s partner, and Ivan talking off in the corner.

  “Those two definitely know each other,” Casper observed.

  “Really well, judging by the expressions on their faces,” Bernie said.

  “Agreed.” Sean straightened up while Bernie scrolled down to the next photo.

  Libby tapped the screen after Bernie had enlarged the photo. It showed Ivan and Alla still talking to each other, only they were standing closer now, almost shoulder to shoulder. “Look at their hands,” she instructed. Bernie, Sean, and Casper did. There was no doubt. Alla and Ivan were holding hands.

  “That’s suggestive,” Sean observed.

  “Isn’t it, though?” Bernie agreed.

  Sean turned to Bernie. “What were these shots intended for?” he asked his daughter.

  “PR stuff. Lucy Chin said they take them at all their events and archive them,” Bernie replied. She rubbed her chin with her knuckles. The name sparked a memory. The flowers, she thought, suddenly remembering what Lucy Chin had said about the flowers on her desk. Then she recalled the photos on the tea shop wall. The flowers were the key. They’d been growing in the garden, right there for everyone to see all along. “You’re wrong,” she said to her dad. “Remember you said the poison is going to make things harder. It’s not. It’s going to make things easier.”

  Then she looked at the grin on Casper’s face.

  “You knew,” she said.

  “I suspected,” Casper said. He was having a hard time suppressing his glee.

  “Then why didn’t you tell us?” Libby demanded.

  “You wouldn’t have believed me,” Casper said.

  “You could have tried,” Bernie told him.

  “I tried. I pointed you in the right direction,” Casper said.

  “No, you didn’t,” Libby told him.

  Bernie held up her hand. “He did,” she said, catching on.

  Libby put her hands on her hips. “How?” she demanded.

  “The tea,” Bernie said. “The tea was yellow.”

  Casper nodded. “Like the flowers.”

  “Are you crazy?” Libby demanded of him. “How were we supposed to figure that out?”

  Casper bit his lip. “You’re detectives. You’re supposed to detect. I thought you’d get it. I did something like it in the last play I staged.”

  “Only this isn’t a play. This is real life,” Libby pointed out. She was having trouble keeping herself from yelling.

  “How did you know?” Sean asked Casper before Libby could say anything else.

  “I didn’t know. I told you: I suspected,” Casper replied. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. He took a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “Actually, ‘suspect’ is too strong a word.”

  “Well, I’m going to use it anyway,” Sean said. “Why did you suspect?” he asked, careful to keep his voice low and reassuring.

  “I don’t know. I was in Alla’s tea shop, and I told her what I was doing. I was staging Hamlet, and I was talking about the poison in the ear scene, and she said in Russia they would use a flower, and then I complimented her about her photographs. Later I remembered seeing flowers like that down in South Carolina, where I was directing Death of a Salesman, and someone telling me to be careful because they were toxic.”

  “Yes,” Sean said. “But what made you think that Alla had murdered Zalinsky?”

  “It was something she said when I was in there buying tea.”

  “I didn’t know you bought tea there,” Libby interrupted.

  “You had only to ask,” Casper told her.

  “Go on,” Sean urged Casper.

  “It was a line of Tennyson.” Casper closed his eyes and recited. “ ‘The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill.’”

  “She said that?” Bernie asked.

  “No, I did,” Casper explained. “She responded with, ‘That works for me’ or words to that effect. Then a couple of days later it just came to me. All the pieces fell into place.”

  “I don’t see how you went from there to her poisoning Zalinsky,” Bernie said.

  “Because Stan told me she hated Zalinsky,” Casper said.

  “And how did Stan know?” Libby asked, although she was almost afraid to.

  “Because he and Alla were sleeping together,” Casper replied.

  Bernie thought back to chasing Stan through the parking lot. She’d been right about his going to see Alla after all. “She was sleeping with Stan and Ivan and Zalinsky?”

  “She was a busy lady,” Casper said.

  “I’ll say,” Libby replied.

  Casper continued. “You can see why I didn’t want to accuse someone if I was wrong,” he said, appealing to Bernie. “The whole thing was so nebulous, and I do have a tendency to invent stuff. I know that. I just thought if I nudged you in the right direction you’d figure it out.”

  Sean leaned forward. “The important question,” he said, “is what are we going to do now?”

  “I think I know,” Bernie responded.

  Chapter 46

  The next morning turned out to be one of those perfect late-summer mornings. The rain had washed all the heat and humidity out of the air. It was seventy degrees and sunny at eight o’clock. The sky was cloudless, the trees, grass, and flowers all vibrant colors. It was a glorious day. A perfect day, Bernie thought, as she, Libby, and Casper drove over to Alla Feldman’s house. They were all crammed together in the front seat of the van, and Bernie was going over the plan.

  It was simple, really. Casper and Libby were going to knock on the door, and when Alla answered, he and Libby were going to tell Alla that Casper had had a change of heart and wanted to give her back the teapot, which he would do for a percentage of the sale price. While they were discussing that, Bernie would slip through the gate, go into Alla’s garden, find a sample of the Gelsemium elegans, or flower of death, as Bernie had taken to calling it, photograph it, and leave. When she got back in the van, she’d call Libby, at which point Libby would feign an emergency, and she and Casper would head out the door. Then they’d all drive home, and Bernie would give what they’d collected to Clyde, who would blackmail Lucy into looking at the new evidence. At least that was the plan.

  “It’ll be fine,” Bernie was reassuring Casper as she passed Michelle’s new shop. It still had a ways to go, she thought, as she warned Casper not to eat or drink anything Alla offered him.

  “Of course, I’m not going to take anything from her. Do I look stupid to you?” Casper demanded.

  Bernie wisely refrained from answering.

  Casper rubbed his hands together. “In fact, I’m looking forward to this. It’s about time Alla got some of her own back.”

  “Let’s just stick to the script,” Libby told him.

  “I will,” Casper told her. “You can count on that.”

  Libby hoped that was the case. Five minutes later, Bernie pulled up in front of Alla Feldman’s house. It was a classic brick colonial, with the window frames and front door painted white. A riot of annuals and
perennials bordered the house, while the lawn was a vivid emerald green. If there was a weed anywhere, Bernie didn’t see it. Whatever else Alla was, Bernie thought, she was a good gardener.

  “Luck,” Bernie told Casper and Libby as Libby started to get out of Mathilda. Then Bernie ducked down as Casper and Libby walked up to Alla’s house and rang the bell. Bernie could hear the door open a minute later. Bernie couldn’t hear what was being said, but a couple of moments after that she heard the sound of the door closing.

  Bernie gave it a couple more minutes, then she lifted up her head and peered through the window. Yup. Everyone was inside. Bernie waited another minute before she got out of the van and quietly shut the door. She kept the van between herself and Alla Feldman’s house until she was out of range of the front window, after which she quickly followed the brick path that led to the backyard. A stockade fence surrounded the backyard, and Bernie had no trouble opening the bolt on the gate and letting herself in.

  For a moment she stood there, overcome by the riot of color. Her first impression was a tangle of plants and flowers and vegetables. It took her a moment to sort things out. A very large vegetable garden was planted in the middle of the yard; to the left of it was an herb garden, and to the right the flowerbeds. Apple, cherry, and peach trees grew around the garden’s perimeter, while a variety of houseplants, including a fig tree, sat on the patio absorbing the summer sun.

  It was an incredible garden, and Bernie was wondering if she and Bernie might be able to grow their own vegetables—on a modified scale, of course—as she walked toward the flowers. Even though it was late in the season, the bed was filled with sweet alyssum, black-eyed Susans and coneflowers, asters, and heather, as well as petunias, snapdragons, impatiens, and a flower with purple fronds that Bernie didn’t know the name of. Morning glories and climbing roses, intertwined with ivy, scaled the fence.

  Bernie was thinking that somehow the whole thing worked, that the flowers formed a coherent whole, when she spotted the plant she was looking for. The Gelsemium elegans was hanging out in front of a bed of ferns near the stockade fence. The yellow, trumpet-shaped flowers glowed in the sunlight. No one, Bernie thought, would ever think those flowers were as deadly as they were. And yet, eating just half of one of them could kill someone.